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Plant scientists around the world share a common goal: understanding plants to improve their tolerance of environmental stresses, resist disease and ultimately, increase yield. Global collaborations that share knowledge and technology are rich in experience and are essential to help accelerate our understanding to meet future challenges.

A recent meeting in El Batán, Mexico, is an excellent example of great minds coming together. Three team members from the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility joined host institution, CSIRO, and CIMMYT in a two-day workshop aimed at achieving critical steps towards a common framework for field phenotyping techniques, data interoperability and sharing experience.

“Capitalising on our respective strengths, we developed basic concepts for several collaborations in physiology and breeding, and will follow up within ongoing projects and through pursuit of new funding,” said Matthew Reynolds, CIMMYT wheat physiologist, signaling the following:

Study of major differences between spike and leaf photosynthesis, and attempts to standardise gas exchange between field and controlled environments.

Work with breeders to screen advanced lines for photosynthetic traits in breeding nurseries, including proof of concept to link higher photosynthetic efficiency/performance to biomass accumulation.

Validation/testing of wheat simulation model for efficient use of radiation.

Evaluation of opportunities to provide environment characterisation of phenotyping platforms, including systematic field/soil mapping to help design plot and treatment layouts, considering bioassays from aerial images as well as soil characteristics such as pH, salinity, and others.

Testing the heritability of phenotypic expression from parents to their higher-yielding progeny in both Mexico and Australia.

Extraction of new remote sensed traits (e.g., number of heads per plot) from aerial images by machine learning (ML) of scored traits by breeders and use of ML to teach those to the algorithm.

Demonstrating a semantic data framework’s use in identifying specific genotypes for strategic crossing, based on phenotypes.

Exchanging suitable data sets to test the interoperability of available data management tools, focusing on the suitability of the Phenomics Ontology Driven Data (PODD) platform for phenotypic data exchanges, integration, and retrieval.

CSIRO and CIMMYT share a long history in crop modelling and physiology, spanning more than 40 years. CIMMYT works throughout the developing world to improve livelihoods and foster more productive, sustainable maize and wheat farming. The centre’s portfolio squarely targets critical challenges, including food insecurity and malnutrition, climate change and environmental degradation. Through collaborative research, partnerships, and training, the centre helps to build and strengthen a new generation of national agricultural research and extension services in maize- and wheat-growing nations. As a member of the CGIAR System composed of 15 agricultural research centres, CIMMYT leads the CGIAR Research Programs on Maize and Wheat, which align and add value to the efforts of more than 500 partners.

The Australian Plant Phenomics Facility’s (APPF) node based at the CSIRO in Canberra was thrilled to host His Excellency Maithripala Sirisena, President of Sri Lanka, and his delegation during their visit to Australia, 24 – 26 May.

This was the first time a Sri Lankan Head of State has made a state visit to Australia and marks the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“President Sirisena’s visit will be an opportunity to advance key areas of bilateral cooperation, including education, defense, science and technology, economic development, medical research and the fight against people smuggling,” Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull said in a statement before their meeting.

Dr Xavier Sirault (right) demonstrates the PlantScan 3D imaging platform to President Sirisena (left) and his delegation at the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility’s node based at the CSIRO in Canberra.

As part of the Canberra visit, the President, who also holds the Cabinet portfolio of Environment, visited the APPF to learn more about plant phenomics which is being used to help tackle the major global challenges of future food production, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity conservation and climate change. The world class facility focuses on deep phenotyping (delving into metabolism and physiological processes within the plant) and reverse phenomics (dissection traits to discover their mechanistic basis).

Dr Sirault discusses the benefits of the Phenomobile Lite with President Sirisena

The President also visited the National Arboretum in Canberra, where he planted a sapling of Mahogany (Toona ciliata) and the ANU-CSIRO Centre for Genomics, Metabolomics and Bioinformatics.

“Sri Lanka can learn a lot from these centres about preserving environment, increasing forest density, and agriculture and food crop research,” said His Excellency Somasundaram Skandakumar, High Commissioner of Sri Lanka.

To find out more about Phenomobile Lite or any other services offered by the APPF node at CSIRO Canberra, please contact Dr Xavier Sirault.

As the sun rises over another crisp autumn morning in Canberra, you will find French intern, Camille Mounier, keenly watching over her rice lines in the Cropatron at the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility’s node at CSIRO Agriculture and Food.

Her project, ‘A complex system biology approach to understand the factors affecting canopy photosynthesis’, is being led by Dr Xavier Sirault, Director of the node, in partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The project team aim to develop system models of canopy photosynthesis for both rice and wheat, in particular, developing novel methods to combine these system models with phenomics data. This approach will help in the identification of the critical factors controlling photosynthetic energy conversion efficiency in C3 species with the view to improving canopy photosynthetic efficiency, and subsequently, crop yields in small grain cereals.

Using the Cropatron platform, Camille will acquire data on canopy growth, gas and energy exchange in order to validate the biophysical photosynthetic model developed by Prof Xinguang Zhu, Head of Plant Systems Biology Group at the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology.

The Cropatron is a PC2 compliant, fully environmentally controlled (temperature, CO2 and humidity) greenhouse equipped with an automated gantry system (operating at 3.5m above the floor) for proxy-sensing imaging of plants grown in mini canopies. The sensing head is composed of an hyperspectral camera (400-1000nm) for measuring chlorophyll pigments, Far IR imaging for proxy sensing of canopy conductance, LiDAR for quantifying canopy architecture and monitoring growth over time, lysimeters for measuring water use at plot level and a gas exchange chamber at canopy level for measuring canopy assimilation.

Academic and commercial plant scientists are welcome to access the Cropatron platform – find out about pricing, availability and bookings here.

With a rapidly growing population, improving the yield of global food staples such as rice has become an urgent focus for plant scientists.

In a recent study published on Plant Physiology, scientists have discovered they can improve rice productivity by selecting rice varieties that are better at capturing sunlight to produce grains instead of reflecting it as heat.

“We studied hundreds of plants from five rice cultivars and found that there is variation between these varieties in relation to the quantity of light they use for growth or dissipate as heat. Some of them are capable of converting more sunlight into chemical energy, producing greater leaf area over time,” said lead researcher, Dr Katherine Meacham.

When leaves intercept sunlight, this sunlight is either; 1) absorbed by the leaf and converted via the process of photosynthesis into the plants own components; leaves, grains, roots, etc. 2) dissipated as heat as an strategy to protect the proteins of the plant from sun damage (photo-protection) or, 3) re-emitted as fluorescent light. In this study, the researchers measured fluorescence to infer the quantity of energy that is either converted into food or dissipated as heat.

“What is new about our research is that scientists had previously thought there was not much variation in how efficiently leaves could absorb and use light, and the reason for this is that they were not considering the full picture and measuring the plants throughout the entire day under natural illumination. We revealed that there are considerable differences between the five rice cultivars under moderate light and that means that there is room for selecting the most efficient plants,” said Professor Furbank.

“We found that there is room for improvement in some cultivars that can result in more photosynthesis without risking the plant’s protection strategies against sunlight damage.

The scientists measured fluorescence by clipping light receptors on leaves throughout a whole day to get a full picture of how the plant uses sunlight.

Traditional breeding for photosynthetic traits has not been a common strategy in any major cereal crop, in part due to the difficulty in measuring photosynthesis in thousands of plants. However, rapid screening tools are now available to study the interaction between the genes and the way they interact with the environment.

“Using unique facilities at the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility’s High Resolution Plant Phenomics Centre we were able to follow chlorophyll fluorescence in rice canopies throughout the entire day under natural illumination. This gave us completely different results when compared to the usual 30 min measurement of leaf level light use efficiency. By combining this with digital biomass analysis using PlantScan, we could link light use efficiency with growth, revealing genetic variation in rice varieties not previously detected,” said Professor Furbank.

“Our next step is to find varieties with superior photo-protection. We can directly use these for breeding and find the genes responsible. We have the capacity to screen many thousands of rice varieties for which we have gene sequence through the International Rice Research Institute,” said Dr Meacham.

The Australian Plant Phenomics Facility (APPF) is a national facility, available to all plant scientists, offering access to infrastructure that is not available at this scale or breadth in the public sectors anywhere else in the world.

Our three nodes in Adelaide and Canberra frequently welcome international research, industry and government guests to tour facilities and share knowledge in plant phenomics. Encouraging and supporting a global community focused on providing better nutrition and food security is key to the APPF vision we uphold.

Recently the CSIRO based HRPPC node of the APPF hosted a VIP visit by the Secretary of the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, Glenys Beauchamp, CSIRO CEO, Larry Marshall, and the Canadian High Commissioner, His Excellency Paul Maddison.

Larry Marshall (CEO, CSIRO), Glenys Beauchamp (Secretary, Department of Industry, Innovation and Science) and His Excellency Paul Maddison (Canadian High Commissioner) in front of a Phenomobile Lite at the APPF HRPPC (Image courtesy of the CSIRO)

Hosted by Drs Xavier Sirault and Jose Jimenez-Berni, the visitors observed aspects of the work done by the APPF’s HRPPC in the controlled environment and had the opportunity to see first-hand one of the centre’s purpose built and designed Phenomobile Lite buggies which are used in the field for capturing plant traits.

The group discussed an overview of the range of research and development activities and issues facing Australia in science and technology and the Canadian High Commissioner shared his interested in areas of existing and potential collaboration between Australia and Canada.

We welcome and encourage engagement with the international plant science community. If you would like to visit one of our sites, discuss your plant phenomics research or book one of our facilities, please contact us – we love plant science!

‘It takes a village to raise a child’ states the age-old saying, but now it will take a village to feed the child as well – if we’re smart.

“Agriculture’s critical challenges of providing food security and better nutrition in the face of climate change can only be met through global communities that share knowledge and outputs; looking inward will not lead to results,” said Ulrich Schurr, Director of the Institute of Bio- and Geosciences of the Forschungszentrum Jülich and Chair of the International Plant Phenotyping Network (IPPN), speaking at the 4th International Plant Phenotyping Symposium in Mexico recently.

200 world-class scientists from over 20 countries gathered from 13 to 15 December 2016 to share knowledge and technology at the symposium, co-hosted by IPPN and the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, known by its Spanish acronym, CIMMYT.